Psychological horror is a genre of video games that does not, as its name would suggest, deal with the terrors of p-hacking, data fabrication, or biased samples, but rather with the realization that the playable character is actually the villain of the story. REVEIL is a slightly offbeat entry in the genre, released just last year by the unknown-to-me studio pixelsplit.1 In it, the players takes on the role of Walter, a former stage builder for a circus. As is usual in this kind of game, you end up walking around in his memories.
And his memories involve a train the circus used to use. He probably remembers this train so well because there is a chessboard in there. .
Walter: Was a real pain to play when the ride was bumpy. I installed a metal plate and little magnets for the figures.
Walter, Walter, Walter. You know there have been magnetic chess sets since forever, right? And that they work? Because half of the pieces on your jerry-rigged contraption have fallen over. Assuming their bottoms are on the fields they were last standing on, the position must have been the following:2
The most salient fact about the position is the absence of white’s king, of course. In fact, I’d say that’s the only salient fact about the position. Unfortunately, some mannequin starts chasing Walter around through carriage after carriage, and there is still a lot of training left.
But, luckily, Walter is not really in danger – Walter is the danger.
Realism: 0/5 There’s a king missing. That immediately yields a zero.
Probable winner: Nobody. White is material up, but without his king he has no chance of promoting his pawn or mating the black king.
1. [I like the title. Does it mean waking up in French or putting on a veil again in English?3] ↩
2. [If you want to see the other bottoms, go here.] ↩
3. [Or perhaps it’s ‘nicer’ in Dutch written backwards?] ↩